The Holiday 2011 Holiday Sculptee de Chanel Highlighting Powder ($72/ .46 oz.) has a gorgeously textured, glazed finished. The compact is the large Chanel version that matches the size of Chanel’s powder foundations and bronzers and comes with a well-designed, usable brush. The compact and velveteen sleeve:

Designed as an elegant gift, the glazing on the highlighter looks beautiful and brushes off easily with a few brush swipes:

The powder is soft and the pattern wears down quite easily. Here is the same compact with the glazing removed and after the highlighter was used once on Liz:

This highlighter did not live up to my expectations. I found that the texture was not as finely milled as Chanel’s Pearl Glow, and the highlighting was so subtle that the product acts more as a very slightly glowy finishing powder. Here is the powder applied heavily on Liz’s cheek over Chanel’s Tweed Brun Rose blush (reviewed here) in sun:

Typically, this type of lighting maximizes the highlighting properties of any powder product (compare Guerlain’s Parure de Nuithere). Neither Liz or I found that Lumiere Sculptee de Chanel had reflectivity. Here is a comparison between Chanel’s Lumiere Sculptee, MAC Lightscapade, Chanel Pearl Glow (reviewed here) and Guerlain Parure de Nuit (which picked up some color from the peacock color shapes):

To be honest, I was disappointed (and a bit surprised) with Chanel Lumiere Sculptee. As beautiful as the product looked in the promotional pictures (really, it absolutely glowed with the pretty glazing), I found the product delivers a finishing powder-type look. Worse, I didn’t find the powder very finely milled. I’d give this a “pass,” even for collectors. Particularly at this price point, this did not work for me.